SEMI-FINALS: Symbol Division (NSFW)

[Sensar]

INTRODUCTION

It was in the library when Trish first stumbled upon the symbol that would lead to her inevitable indoctrination into the sex cult.

The textbooks she was looking at–all of them massive bricks from the Reagan era–brimmed with laissez-faire propaganda. Just how the banks were too big to fail, these fuckers seemed too big to even budge.

One volume, a sliver of burgundy leather amidst two slabs of charcoal, was the only one to even give her the time of day. In fact it overcompensated, for as she tried to wiggle it forth with her fingers, the text rocketed outwards, flying into the opposite shelf before slamming unflatteringly onto the floor.

Pages unfurled to a chapter glorifying Adam Smith, and Trish knelt down and saw the graffiti, sprawled neatly in ballpoint pen. An innocuous symbol, surprisingly, at least to her.

[Sensar]

DUE WARNING:

Both contestants have informed me their stories could be considered risqué. If you're not into that sort of thing, proceed (or don't) accordingly.

[Sensar]

ENTRY #1

It was in the library when Trish first stumbled upon the symbol that would lead to her inevitable indoctrination into the sex cult.

The textbooks she was looking at–all of them massive bricks from the Reagan era–brimmed with laissez-faire propaganda. Just how the banks were too big to fail, these fuckers seemed too big to even budge.

One volume, a sliver of burgundy leather amidst two slabs of charcoal, was the only one to even give her the time of day. In fact it overcompensated, for as she tried to wiggle it forth with her fingers, the text rocketed outwards, flying into the opposite shelf before slamming unflatteringly onto the floor.

Pages unfurled to a chapter glorifying Adam Smith, and Trish knelt down and saw the graffiti, sprawled neatly in ballpoint pen. An innocuous symbol, surprisingly, at least to her. A rune of some sort. Angular and rigid, and drawn with a remarkable clarity and steadiness. The lines were perfectly straight and unwavering, the angles symmetrical and clean. The geometry was uncannily tidy and proportional. Its dark pigment blotted out words and pictures, its deep blacks dominating the page. A shiver crawled down Trish’s spine and the hairs on her forearms stood in the sudden breeze – her limbs went cold, and her chest warmed.

Trish shut the book on instinct. This wasn’t altogether unusual for her. She had, as a child, been readily uneased by the abstract paintings hung in her father’s office, and cried on command whenever her mother would sing her the Teddy Bears’ Picnic. “You’ve got a sensitive little soul, Patricia, darling,” her mother said. “You feel everything and anything.” As such, Trish managed to shake off the symbol, attributing it to that characteristic sensitivity of hers. She scooped the book from the floor and checked out of the library in a hurry, never again opening it to the rune-marked page and forgetting, entirely, the way it seemed spring-loaded in the shelf, all too anxious to present itself to her.

It wasn’t until a week later, in her German class, that the symbol arose in her mind again. The boy who’d sat next to her all semester, Christian, was taking off his jacket and his flannel as he sat down, and Trish took the opportunity to glance at him. The sleeve of his t-shirt was unkempt and raveled – and there, on his upper arm, before he straightened the fabric again, was the symbol. The same rune. Identical. It had an unmistakable look, something between an ‘R’ and an ‘F’, she thought, and presented in that same deep, black pigment.

She spent the remainder of the class distracted. Between writing down conjugations and modals her mind returned, over and over, to the rune, and Christian, and what she might say to him. He had an intimidating presence. Something in his strong cheekbones, his wide jaw, his bright eyes, his posture. She’d never spoken to him except in those awkward ‘turn to a partner’ moments with which her professor would occasionally torture the class, but had no hesitation in admiring him when he was turned away from her. She felt gawky whenever they made eye contact. In those moments, she could intimately sense every pimple on her forehead, every blemish on her cheeks.

When class let out, she followed him down the hallway and, just before the stairs, called out, “Hey!”

Christian turned and was quick to greet her with a smile.

She resisted her instinct to look down and away. “Hey, uh. Sorry if this it totally weird or whatever, but, uh, I saw your tattoo.”

“Oh. Yeah, which one?”

She gestured with her head toward his right forearm. “The rune-thing?”

Christian pushed his jacket down and tugged on the sleeve of his t-shirt, briefly revealing a portion of the symbol. “Oh, yeah, that’s a new one. I got it over the winter.”

That same strange shiver from the library ran down her back, through her arms, into her fingers. “Oh…” she said, her mouth catching up to her frazzled thoughts. “Oh, really? It’s, um, it’s nice,” Trish said, suddenly finding that words required manual, intentional effort to produce.

Christian let out a weak laugh and smiled. “Thanks. Do you, uh, have any?”

“Oh, um. No,” Trish said, and paused a moment. The pair’s gaze met for an instant, then fell to the floor, and the wall, and back to one another, and down again. “I was just wondering what it meant? I, um. I think I saw it the other day and I was just curious. If that’s not too weird?”

Christian laughed and shook his head. “No, Trish, it’s not too weird. It is a rune, you’re right. A bindrune, actually.”

“Oh. Right, yeah, of course.”

Christian let out a small laugh again. “I don’t know if you know anything about that, but basically it’s, like, several symbols put together so it combines their meanings. This one combines the symbols for, uh, let’s see… wealth, journey, joy, and God. But, of course, other ones have different meanings. This one’s kind of personal. It’s a Wiccan thing – I’m kind of a Wiccan.”

“Oh,” Trish mustered, “that’s cool. I just… yeah, I don’t know, I’d just seen it somewhere else and was curious if it was, like, a Thing, or whatever. It’s cool, though.”

Christian bobbed his head and his faced turned inquisitive. “Where’d you see it? I mean, I kind of made it – well, my friends and I, we kind of made it up. Or at least, I thought we did?”

Despite her certainty earlier, Trish now doubted whether it actually was the same rune. She’d only gotten a glance of each, and with all the lines and angles, maybe she’d gotten it wrong. She didn’t really know the first thing about any of that stuff – maybe they all looked more-or-less the same? “Oh. Uh, it was just in a book? Maybe it was different. It probably was a different one. It was just, I don’t know, like scribbled in a book. Like someone drew it in my econ book. I just thought it was really weird – I mean, not weird, it’s cool, I don’t know anything about it. I was just curious.” Trish’s muscles clenched and her cheeks flushed.

“Oh, okay, yeah. Well, uh, hey, I gotta get going, but if you’re really curious about that kind of thing, you could come to the Wiccan Club? We meet every Thursday at seven o’clock in the Oak Grove. I can introduce you to everyone? Or not! Open invitation.”

“Uh, yeah, no, that sounds cool,” Trish said in a more excitable tone than she had intended. “I mean, maybe I will. I’ve got to go too, so, yeah.” She started to turn away, distinctly aware that her next class was, in fact, in the same direction Christian was going.

“Hope to see you there, Trish. Take it easy.” He smiled and gave a small wave.

Trish’s throat clenched when he used her name. “Yeah, you too, Christian,” she chirped, waving in return.

She walked a roundabout loop to her next class to avoid uncomfortable crossing paths. It was only in that moment that she realized just how cute she thought he was. She hadn’t had a crush in a long time, maybe since sophomore year of high school, and the ruthlessly self-conscious, uncomfortable feelings that accompanied one hadn’t been pieced together until now. She had a crush. Great, she thought. Every German class from there on out was going to be totally weird.

The implications of having a crush on a boy dominated her thoughts. She sat on her bed that night writing an essay and thinking about him, and the tattoo, and replaying their conversation in her head. She tried to recall small details, things she said wrong, ways he could have interpreted her words. Whether her makeup looked good, whether her hair was a wreck. She tried to read into his looks, his gestures. She built and dismissed and rebuilt narratives in which he thought she was gross and intrusive or in which he was madly in love with her. She scribbled lines and angles on Post-It notes in an attempt to recreate the – what had he called it? Bindrune?

In German the next day, she sat rapidly shaking her heels until he walked in the door and tossed his backpack beneath the seat next to her. “Hey, Trish,” he said with a casualness that destroyed her.

“Oh, hi. Hey there.”

“Invitation is still open for that meeting tonight, by the way.”

She swallowed hard. “Oh, uh, yeah, maybe. When is it again?”

“Seven, in the Oak Grove. No pressure or anything, but, uh, yeah! You should come.” They made eye contact, if only for a second, but that was it. That was all it took, and she knew it immediately. Christian had, miraculously, gone from being an intimidating boy who sat next to her in German class to the cutest guy in the entire world, and he genuinely seemed to want to see her again. She was completely enraptured.

Trish found herself sitting a little closer to his side of her desk all class, and walked out of class just behind him, allowing her eyes to stray down to his ass as they walked down the crowded stairs.

She changed her outfit seven times before going out that night. She had decided to wear a necklace her sister had gotten her at the Renaissance Faire, a little pink crystal wrapped in copper wire, then decided against it. What if these were the kinds of people who knew all about crystals and asked her about it? What would she say? Were Wiccans the people who used crystals, anyway? After an hour of building a pile of discarded clothes on her bathroom floor, she eventually found herself walking toward the Oak Grove, tugging and smoothing her shirt all the way.

The Wiccan Club was a small group of eight or ten students. The girl who stood at the front of the room was a slightly chubby blonde with a ring or two on every finger and a pink crystal necklace wrapped in copper wire, all but identical to Trish’s. They sat around quietly until Christian arrived, the last to do so, and he smiled ear-to-ear when he saw Trish there. “Hey! You came!”

Trish smiled sheepishly.

“Hey, everyone, this is Trish. She’s in my German class.”

Everyone turned to her in unison and offered a myriad of greetings. They probed her a bit about Wiccanism and witchcraft and she smiled and shrugged uncomfortably. “I just, uhm. I saw this rune in a book and then I saw it on Chri—Christian’s tattoo. And he invited me and I thought, I mean, my sister does a lot of stuff with crystals and incense and, I mean, I’m not, like, an atheist or a Christian or whatever, but I do believe in something, and I just thought I’d come and… yeah.”

“Well, you’re more than welcome here and we’re glad to have you,” the chubby girl said. “I’m Sam. I’m the club president. We just gather every week to talk and make a few sacrifices sometimes and we do some special things for the Goddess on the equinoxes and things like that. I can lend you some books if you’d like. Or I can email you some links. Or, maybe you won’t find any of this interesting and you’ll never come again! And that’d be fine too!” A few of the members laughed at that comment.

Sam felt very genuine and sincere. In fact, everyone with whom she spoke that evening seemed to be a very honest and gentle person, and the energy of the meeting – though she felt like a bit of an outsider at times – was a warm and welcoming one. Trish hadn’t made many friends yet at university. Even her roommate didn’t seem to click with her. Maybe this could be the start of that, she thought. Whenever she felt she could add a comment that wasn’t utterly stupid or out-of-place, she tried, and it went remarkably well. She and Christian caught one another’s gaze every few minutes, and being around him outside of class made her stomach flutter.

At the end, he offered to walk her home, and he thanked her again for coming. “I know it can be weird going to a thing like that when you feel like you don’t know anything about it. But I’m really glad you came.” The two shared a brief hug at the door to her dorm building, and Trish’s pulse didn’t settle again for nearly an hour. After German that Friday, Christian asked her out for coffee, and they sat and talked for a long while about their hometowns and their families and their majors, and they hugged again outside of her dorm, this time a little longer, a little tighter.

Trish went to the Wiccan Club meeting the next week, and again the week after. Sam brought her a pair of books on the basics of casting spells and something called ‘sympathetic magic’. If she was being honest with herself, she wasn’t sure how much of it she bought. Magical spells and symbols, chakras and runes, the Goddess and the Moon. It felt like something from a fairy tale or from the Lord of the Rings. But the more she learned about it, the less of an outsider she felt at the meetings. Her questions about it were a conversation topic between her and Christian, and the topic became a catalyst for new friendships, and quickly, more than that.

Soon, Christian wasn’t leaving her at her door, but was coming in. They sat on her bed and talked there, and their departures were marked by kisses rather than hugs. And within a few weeks, they held hands on their walks home from German class, and he was staying the night in her dorm nearly as many days as not.

Trish had had a sexual relationship with her high school boyfriend, but the sex between them, which had only happened a dozen or so times, had always felt a little forced. It felt like a stand-alone activity, something they planned to do. With Christian, it arose so naturally. They fell into it and fell out of it. He lasted longer, was gentler, was more thoughtful and intentional. He looked in her eyes the whole time. He cared how she felt. He spent time just appreciating her body, just making her feel comfortable. He never finished until she did. He made her feel confident and comfortable in her own skin.

And she became happier.

Trish and Christian’s relationship took no time in catching fire and the energy between the two became bright, shining, exciting. She couldn’t look at him without her heart racing and palms sweating. Her smiles became giggles, their hand-holding became an intense and intimate, physical connection. He’d run his fingers down her arm or rest his hand on her leg when they sat together. He made her bite her lip, curl her toes.

One night, after he’d been over, she’d fallen asleep, utterly exhausted, limbs full of adrenaline and head full of oxytocin, and she had a dream unlike any she’d ever had before. A dream without a body, without space or time. A dream of disembodied feelings, of energy, of wordless voices and indescribable colors. She felt a presence, feminine and intense, powerful and sensual, and she saw the rune – the rune on Christian’s arm, the one she touched every time they laid together, the one that always seemed to catch the light, even in a dark room. In the dream, the rune swallowed her whole, it encapsulated all of her dimensions and emanated light from every facet. It felt like being inside one of those abstract paintings from her father’s office. And the dream faded so smoothly, so unbroken and seamless into the dawn, into the beams of light that fell on her pillow as she awoke.

She told Christian about it that afternoon.

“That’s… I’ve never heard of a dream like that one,” Christian said.

“I’ve never had one like that one. Nothing even close.”

“You’re sure it was this same bindrune?” he asked, pointing to his arm.

“One hundred percent.”

Christian stared for a while into his cup of coffee. Trish struggled to read his face.

“Is that… I mean, is that bad? I still don’t know much about any of this.”

Christian read the anxiety in Trish’s voice. “No, no. It’s just, I mean, Sam and Bryan and I, we kind of came up with this symbol ourselves, as our interpretation of the Goddess. Anyone can make a bindrune, it’s just combining runes together, but combining these specific four runes isn’t exactly something that you’ll find anywhere else, you know? And you saw it in that book – which is still weird, by the way – and that’s kind of how you and I even met, and now you saw it in a dream which sounds like it was kind of a serious dream.”

“I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing.” Trish doubted her own words. The dream had changed the tone of her whole day. Her heart felt roused by it, in a very different and more powerful way than the strange chill she had gotten from seeing it in the book.

Christian chewed his lip. “Alright. Well. Look, I’m gonna have to run this past Sam, ‘cause she makes the final calls on all these things, but. The club is supposed to be having a weekend meeting for the full moon this Saturday. And I’m thinking maybe you need to be there.”

Trish sat with the last sentence, with the word ‘need’. “If you think so,” she said with a seriousness in her voice.

Christian’s expression remained flat. “I’ll ask Sam. But you’re free Saturday, yeah?”

“I think so.”

Something subtle shifted in the character of her relationship with Christian between that conversation and Saturday. As though, always, at the back of his mind, something had set him on edge. Trish could sense it behind his words, behind his smiles, a tension. Sam had approved Trish’s attending the full moon meeting, but asked Sam to ensure Trish was aware that it was going to be a very different kind of meeting than the ones she’d been to previously.

“I don’t know how else to say it,” Christian explained. “It’s kind of… a sexual thing. It’s not like an orgy or anything! It’s not like that. It’s, just, you know… people might be taking off their clothes. And only if you want to! It’s not, like. It’s not a weird thing.” Christian’s face had gone pink. “I know it sounds weird, I don’t know how to not – how to make it sound not weird, but. It’s really not?”

When Christian started talking, Trish anticipated her own reaction. She anticipated her fear and anxiety and hesitancy. But it never came. She didn’t feel weird. She wasn’t worried. Maybe it was her mood that day, and maybe when the time came she’d be freaking out, but in truth, in that moment, she thought it sounded like it could be fun. She eased Christian with a small smile and leaned in for a kiss. “It’ll be fine,” she said.

The full moon meeting was at Sam’s house, a small, run-down place a few blocks from campus. Sam had given everyone a large sheet of forest green fabric when they came inside, which they’d wrapped around themselves like cloaks. Sam sat next to Christian in a circle that they’d formed on the floor of Sam’s living room, her sparse furniture all pushed against the walls. The room was filled with candles and sticks of incense, and once the last of them had arrived, the blinds were shut and the lights switched off. The room’s lighting transformed into a warm, dim orange and the musky smell of incense never seemed to wane.

Sam gave a long speech in line with the New Age-y books that she’d let Trish borrow. She spoke about opening chakras, about aligning Kundalini energy and opening the upper and lower dantians. One of the boys there passed around something that resembled a bar of soap, milky-clear, full of sprigs of herbs. They each rubbed it up and down their arms and over their faces to ‘stabilize their energies’ and cleanse themselves of any ‘murky, burdensome energy’ that they might have brought with them. Sam spoke about allowing one’s higher capital-S Self to teach one’s lower self, and stressed the importance of acknowledging and balancing body and mind, intuition and knowledge, feeling and wisdom.

After the diatribe, Sam and another girl began the preparations for the ritual itself. They spoke of invoking the Goddess, and provided her with a half-dozen names and titles. The candles were brought to the edge of the circle and were interspersed with large, natural-looking crystals. “Rose quartz, for purity and healing, to allow energy to flow freely, unburned, clean and clear.” A brown fur blanket – faux fur, Trish suspected – was laid in the middle of the circle, and a smudge of white sage leaves was lit, and its smoke was spread around the room, held over each of their shoulders for a few seconds while Sam whispered some kind of incantation under her breath.

Trish was beginning to think that Sam and Christian had overstated the weirdness of the meeting. It was almost a caricature of a ritual, and she was finding it to be kind of fun – like Halloween. Maybe, she thought, they were all getting something from this. That they were all having genuine and intense spiritual experiences right now. Perhaps she really was the odd one out.

Sam left the room for a moment and returned with a large, misshapen loaf of brown bread, the top covered in sunflower kernels. She laid the bread on a wooden cutting board and tore it, ripping a few dozen pieces away, and, with a spoon, drizzled big, viscous streams of honey over it. The board was passed around and each of them took a piece of the honey-drenched bread. Trish had never been fond of brown breads, but took a bite anyway, and the sweetness hit her tongue peculiarly, and she felt the sensation run through her jaw and down her neck, until her whole body felt electrically warm and sweet. She was, at once, tremendously relaxed, almost numb from head to toe, and following the bread around the circle came an eccentric pewter goblet of red wine. She took a large drink and the warmth intensified, and the numbness became a deep, sedating comfort, and her clothes felt soft and sensual, almost erotic against her skin.

Something was happening.

She turned to Christian and found he was already looking at her. The colors of his face – the pink of his skin, the brown of his hair, the hazel green of his eyes – were vibrant and stunning like oil paints. There was an uncanny closeness between them, as though their eyes were an inch from one another’s rather than a foot, and her world tunneled and narrowed until Christian’s eyes and face encompassed her whole field of view. He held a piece of the bread to her mouth and she took it and savored it, allowing it to sit on her tongue, soften and dissolve, the sweetness spreading and intensifying again. She offered him a piece in return and heard Sam’s voice, quiet and low, guiding them through something of a meditation. Christian smiled lightly and closed his eyes and Trish followed suit, turning back to the center of the circle and adjusting her posture to a straight, stoic pose.

Something was happening.

Sam spoke of grounding, of roots spreading from their lower chakras and nourishing them from the earth. Of golden energy flowing up the roots and through their chest, filling them with pure earth, and blossoming and branching out through their heads like flower petals. Sage smoke, again, and Trish opened her eyes. Sam had, at some point, stripped herself completely naked save her crystal necklace. She was walking around the circle, gently waving the smudge of sage, and the others had begun to open their eyes and take off their robes and clothes as well. She turned to Christian whose expression was less warm now than before.

Trish’s body ran with a tremendous warmth and her consciousness was floaty, easy, relaxed. From a few bites of bread and one sip of wine, she felt vaguely drunk, like she could say anything to anyone, uninhibited and unburdened. She smiled wide at Christian, and visualized her love and compassion for him reaching out through the space between them, and wanted nothing more in that moment than to make him at ease. She pulled her robe off her shoulders, followed by her shirt, and bra, and unzipped her jeans. The colors of her clothes and of her body were astonishingly clear and beautiful in their hues and the room’s dim lighting seemed to have turned the whole world into an impressionist canvas.

Something was happening.

Trish heard Sam speak in the gentlest of tones, “You’re safe,” to one of the girls on the opposite side of the circle whose forearm was pressed shyly against her breasts. One of the boys had closed his eyes again and had begun to sing very softly in a language Trish couldn’t identify. Even without clothes, her whole body, from her the tip of her nose to her toes, was utterly warm and relaxed. She felt at home, here, and completely at ease. Her muscles sank into a limp and gentle state, and her breaths became deliciously slow and easy.

Christian was one of the last to disrobe and Trish smiled at him as he pulled his boxers past his knees. She looked over his body and was madly enamored with it. Her heart picked up pace again and she reached out for him, resting her hand on his leg. His body was cold in comparison to hers and she consciously imagined her own warmth spreading from her hand through his skin and into his bones. She looked at the rune on Christian’s shoulder and an abrupt wave of euphoria washed over her, like the world in that moment was without any flaws, like nothing was wrong or had ever been wrong. Like she was so exactly and precisely where she needed to be. An unearthly contentment like nothing she had ever felt before – and yet like a feeling of home, of return, of familiarity and of comfort.

Sam was knelt on the fur in the center of the circle, and had laid out several grey stones marked with black-stained carvings of runes, simpler and more legible than the one of her dreams. Sam looked up from the runestones and straight into Trish’s eyes, and a clear bond was formed in the distance between them. Trish was keenly aware of their nudity, their unabashed openness, and felt a connection with Sam almost as intense as the one she felt with Christian. She longed to embrace her, to give her anything she wanted, to make her feel the warmth that she felt herself.

“Christian and Trish will provide us with the Great Rite,” Sam whispered. “The Goddess has felt their love, and seeks to be witness to a holy union between them.”

Something was happening.

There was movement and a frenzy of colors and feelings and Trish found herself laid against the fur, the warm hair against her bare shoulders and ass. She bent her legs so that she could rub the soles of her feet against the blanket and spread her knees wide. Christian was above her and his skin was had become perfectly golden in the candlelight, almost blinding in his sheer intensity. She turned her head against the fur and pressed her cheek into it. She felt herself to be in a womb, in a nest, safe and warm, and fell deeper into the comfort and the dark. Christians’ hands ran from her head to her hips and up again, over her stomach and her breasts, and each touch was another wave of intense euphoria. Her head was spinning and swirling and the floor was pivoting on an impossible axis. They were spiraling through space, unbounded, in some limitless dance, and though her eyes were closed, the colors of their bodies were shining and radiating in fireworks of geometry and light.

Trish felt herself become the space itself, become the openness, and the movement was not apart but within her, and the warmth was inside of her, and Christian was inside of her, and her skin encompassed the both of them, and everything, until the world and everything in it was inside of her skin which was buzzing with beautiful vibrations, and all boundaries of hers or his dissolved into that warmth, that spiraling, swirling warmth. And she let go of the last tensions she held, and the last of her gave way, and in the emptiness that encompassed the room, and the world beyond the room, and the world beyond that, her consciousness was pushed aside – and something else, feminine, sensual, erotic, so bright and aflame, took her place. She felt herself a spectator in a great void of music and heat, and felt a presence at the center of it all, the same from her dream. The presence greeted her with those same selfless and impossibly compassionate intentions she had offered Christian and Sam. Love, love, love. Unburdened, limitless adoration swept her away, and Trish submitted to it, and welcomed it, and wept.

“Freyja!”

Christian’s back was against the fur. Freyja was atop him and he moaned – he moaned and gasped and wailed and his nails dug into the fur and his ankles bowed and his eyes bulged. His whole body undulated and pulsed. Freyja’s body rolled and gyred atop him in rhythmic harmony and Christian was nearly screaming, whining, sharp, shrill moans, punctuated with deep, guttural gasps. The members of the circle had turned outward and sung in unison but their voiced were drowned out by Freyja’s, incomparably louder, and Christian’s voice finally came: “Please!”

And Freyja laughed. A warm, rising contralto, one that reverberated from every corner of the room, that shook the foundation of the house, that extinguished the candles, that commanded Christian’s body into writhing twitches of ecstasy. Sam was trembling and rocking back and forth, and Christian began to roar, syllables and names, his arms raised, palms splayed, legs contorted and kicking until every muscle in his body compressed at once and his back arched with a tremendous angle and, gasping, he collapsed to the floor, quiet and still.

The singing began to fade. Sam’s rocking slowed to a gentle undulation.

Trish found her nails dug into Christian’s chest and lifted her hands away. His body beneath her was drenched in sweat. Her pores all stood erect, her hairs on end, her abdominals still twitching. She slowly lifted herself off of him, and fell back onto the floor, her feet on his shoulders. Her whole body tingled and clenched, muscles twitching and relaxing and clenching again. When Sam flicked on a lamp in the corner, the brightness was so intense that Trish squeeze her eyes shut, and lay for minutes, perhaps hours, her mind lost in a still, quiet place without mark or distinction, settling or focusing on nothing at all.

In time, she found herself being lifted by the armpits, and washed with a damp rag before being wrapped in the green cloth. She opened her eyes only slightly and joined the others in walking through Sam’s kitchen and onto her back deck. The cool, night air refreshed her skin. She craned her neck upwards and admired the stars, and the moon, a plump white fruit at the center of the sky.

“Are you okay?” Christian asked at some point. And she nodded.

Trish had come up behind her at some point and, in a quiet tone, said that it might be more appropriate if Trish, rather than herself, was the president of their club. And Trish shook her head.

Someone lit a cigarette and it passed around, and Trish took a long, slow drag from it. And her mind began to come back to her, and her thoughts began to solidify, and her feelings began to stabilize. “I think I’d like to go home now,” she said.

Inside, she dressed and gathered herself. Christian’s eyes never left her. He asked, again, “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “Are you okay?”

Christian drew a deep breath and his brow raised, eyes widening. “Uh, yeah. I’m… I’m… good. I’m really good, yeah. I’m fine.”

Trish laughed a lilting, contralto laugh, and the hairs on the arms of everyone in the room stood on end. “Something happened. And things are going to be different now. But things are going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

[Sensar]

ENTRY #2

An Anatomy of a Sex Cult

by Lady Chatterley's Lover

Part I

It was in the library when Trish first stumbled upon the symbol that would lead to her inevitable indoctrination into the sex cult.

The textbooks she was looking at–all of them massive bricks from the Reagan era–brimmed with laissez-faire propaganda. Just how the banks were too big to fail, these fuckers seemed too big to even budge.

One volume, a sliver of burgundy leather amidst two slabs of charcoal, was the only one to even give her the time of day. In fact it overcompensated, for as she tried to wiggle it forth with her fingers, the text rocketed outwards, flying into the opposite shelf before slamming unflatteringly onto the floor.

Pages unfurled to a chapter glorifying Adam Smith, and Trish knelt down and saw the graffiti, sprawled neatly in ballpoint pen. An innocuous symbol, surprisingly, at least to her. It almost looked like a cross section of the Earth. Yet Trish wanted to rule that out on behalf of all of her fellow economic students. They may not know about actual science, but surely no one would have forgotten about the Earth's crust. The symbol merely had a circle within a circle, and a dot within the middle of it all. Scrawled underneath was an address and time.

Trish stared at the writing. For all she knew, the graffiti came from decades ago. It was written during a time where laissez faire economics were new and Ronald Reagan had yet ascended to the rank of Messiah. Yet, the address was that of a house not far down the road from her. The time was in several days. She pushed the thought out of her mind. It was nothing. Like whenever she learned a new word and suddenly everyone around her would start using it incessantly. The universe was full of coincidence and Trish dropped the book in her bag, readying herself for another night of Miltonian self-masturbation by poorly paid professors.

The ways to the stairs were blocked by two large men. There was a time where they might have been considered well-dressed, but that was four hundred years ago. Tunics bulged, buttons screaming in agony, as the men's considerable girth were squeezed into the queer, multi-coloured fabric. Writing them off as drama students, Trish walked a little closer. It was strange for them to be on the top floor of the library. The building worked on the concept of architectural malice. The economic and law majors were put at the top, where they had to carried their heavy tomes down the most stairs. At the bottom were the drama students, so close to the Starbucks that they couldn't afford.

The two men stood at the top of the stairs, staring down at a single coin, eyebrows knitted together like an old sweater. Wrinkling her nose, Trish tried to force the smell of burnt meat, beer and human body odor back down her nostrils.

“Uh, excuse me,” she said, trying to squeeze between the two men. She was so close she could see the coin on the floor. The tarnished copper head of Queen Elizabeth I stared back at her. “Wow. Is... did you get that on Ebay or something?”

“Oh, it is a wretched thing, good lady,” one of the men said.

The other knelt down, letting out a groan as if someone stood behind him, their hands slowly squeezing the air from his diaphragm. He picked up the coin and flicked it again. Queen Elizabeth I continued to stare up at them. “'Tis a mockery, forsooth.”

“It is a cursed coin, you see?” the first man said and Trish tried to compose her face into something other than sheer bafflement. “We are tossing to see if we can get off the stairs. Tails, we can leave. Heads, we must stay. 'Tis the ninety second head in a row. Such a cruel mistress, old Bessy is.”

“Why, why are you even waiting for the coin?”

“We don't really know,” the second man said, reaching down to toss the coin. It was heads again. “We tried saying heads we could leave, but we got to four hundred tails and had to give up.”

“Hmm,” Trish breathed, feigning concern as she wondered how quickly she could get away from the madmen. “I think if you want to go down the stairs, you should just go.”

“It is easier said than done, my lady. Try and not go down the stairs right now. You will find it quite impossible.”

“I doubt that! It's pretty easy to stop yourself walking down the stairs,” Trish said as she walked down the stairs. Much to her surprise, she found herself at the bottom, looking up at the two figures still waiting at the top. A coin tumbled through the air. Trish shook her head. She needed more sleep if university was going to always be this weird.

“Oh, dear lady,” one of the men called, still rooted to the spot. “You have no idea.”

Canto VII

“We're thrilled to have you here, I just wasn't expecting anyone, that's all,” the sporadically stubbled young man said, rushing around his kitchen, stacking bowls and mugs to dangerous heights. “You understand, of course. And naturally, the Nipple's temple is far cleaner. For obvious reasons! But I'm just an intermediary, a way to ease people into the lifestyle. Tell them when Freshers Day is.”

Looking around the darkened dining room, Trish bit her lip. Her heart thumped loudly in the otherwise quiet room. She had no idea where she was. Moving to the window, she stared out at the street passing on by. A wave of relief washed over her. She knew the street. In fact, she knew the house. It was the address that had been written into the textbook.

“Hang on,” she said, the man's words sinking into her brain. “Did you just say the Nipple.”

The young man paused, his face an early mock up for the concept of incredulousness. “What else is that symbol going to be?”

Trish followed the man's finger and found herself staring at her textbook, opened to the graffiti stricken page. She stared at the crustless earth and her face went decidedly pink. Now that someone had voiced it aloud, she could quite obviously see a breast, areola and nipple. “Why on earth...”

“It's like the Prophet always say,” the man said, a hand on either side of a twelve tall stack of plates. “The Nipple is what combines us, unites us. Guides us. Feeds us. Women do not possess a penis and men do not have a vagina. But we all have nipples.”

There was a beat, a moment of silence before the man continued. “We also all have assholes too, but honestly, the Asshole didn't seem quite so inviting.”

“I think I've missed something.” She had.

The man flicked a switch and the dining room was finally bathed in light, a buzzing filling the room. A fly was being slow roasted in the glass prison of the bulb. Taking the least dirtied of the glasses, the man poured a glass of water and handed it to Trish. She placed it on the table without a sip. Her host smiled at her and sat down at the table, pulling the textbook in front of him.

“The Nipple,” he said, pausing for full dramatic effect, “is a sex cult.”

A full array of actions crossed Trish's mind. She could have laughed, she could have stayed silent. It wouldn't have seemed too over the top to scream. Most of all, her face burning in the dingy dining room, she wanted to flee. To run and disappear into the fresh air outside, to never come back to the paint peeling house. Instead, she pursed her lips together and stared at the man. “Hmm.”

“New members meetings are the first Fridays of every month,” the man said, smiling like a kindly old uncle. “Expressly no sexual contact. Even if you want to. We're a sex cult, not a jamboree. It's all about making new initiates feel welcomed.”

There was another lull in the conversation and as she thought of hooded men and semen arching through the air, Trish realized the art of conversation demanded her to step up to the plate. “Oh.”

“So, are you interested in coming?”

“Um, sorry,” Trish said, the act of speaking multiple words causing her voice to buckle under the strain. “I don't think this is really for me.”

Act Two; Scene Four

Walking toward the address for the sex cult, Trish tried to understand why her feet were carrying her down the road. She didn't want to go. The idea churned her stomach. All week she had been picturing the bowels of some dark house, a herd of overweight men masturbating over the solitary woman that had stumbled into their domain. Only once did she realize she was picturing a more horrific Shelob's lair. Yet, the cult had never been far from her mind. She had googled the address the strange man had given her. It was a frat house. Trish was already turning away, rolling her eyes, when she realized which house it was in particular. During freshers week, it was the only fraternity that had not draped its walls in fist clenchingly offensive slogans. In fact, it was the place that many of her girl friends quite happily disappeared off to celebrate the arrival of the weekend each week.

“I still don't want to go,” Trish said to no one in particular. She carried on walking.

The house appeared in front of her and hanging from the attic's window was a sheet, the Nipple drawn clearly on it. Now was the time to turn away. Trish pressed forward. The man at the door nodded and waved her inside. Shielding her eyes, she stumbled against the wall as the bright light filled every corner of the wide open room. It was teeming with people, young men and women laughing as they sipped at their drinks. Despite herself, Trish let her eyes drop to the waistbands of the men's jeans around her. They all looked like they were packing firearms. Then, remembering where she was, she realized the shapes were probably their cocks.

“I'm not waking up with kidneys tomorrow,” Trish said, the words lost in the churning volume of the room.

The main living room was huge, furniture sprawled throughout. No one were looking at the couches and sex swings, though, their eyes directed above. The mezzanine landing hung over a third of the ground floor. A man stood on it, his hand in the air. The chatter died away. People stepped forward, forming a semi-circle. Her palms laced with sweat, Trish stumbled forward to join the crowd. It seemed safer pressed between the armpits of two bulky football players.

“Welcome ladies, gentlemen, and those of non-binary genders,” the man said, nodding at the semi circle. “And most importantly of all, potential new initiates. I hope you have a great night. We don't like to fuck around here, so I give to you, the seeker of sexual enlightenment... the Prophet!”

No sooner had the man finished his announcement did the lights cut, the room plunged into a deep darkness. Trish knew she was so not waking up with kidneys. She almost expected to feel a hand on her back, fingers hitching up her shirt, the cool kiss of a knife on her skin. Nothing happened. The aroma of unwashed wide receiver wafted over her and the crowd seemed to push a little closer together. She was being squeezed in a fleshy vice.

“Tonight, I'm gonna have myself a good time. I feel a-a-a-alive. And the world, is turning inside out, yeah. I'm floating around in ecstasy. So don't stop me now, don't stop me, cause I'm having a good time.”

Trish's body clutched a little tighter at her kidneys.

A switch flicked on and the room was bathed once more in light. Catching sight of the Prophet on the landing, Trish's first thought was that he looked normal enough. Then it happened. Even now, Trish still wasn't sure what it even was, but it happened. She struggled to keep up, her eyes flying in a hundred different directions all at once.

A cardboard star was thrown across the room, closely followed by a man wearing a tiger onesie. Wearing a Isaac Newton mask, a naked woman galloped past the crowd, slapping her round, soft rump. A microwave pinged from the kitchen and someone ran past with a lamp. Two hundred cell phones rung out simultaneously. The room was beginning to spin and Trish reached out at the nearest body next to her, clinging at its arm to hold herself upright. There was a moment of respite. Emerging from the crowd, an overweight student stood in the middle of the free space and slowly unwrapped a Mars bar. He gave the crowd a meaningful glance and then began to slowly chew on it.

“Sorry,” he mumbled through a mouthful of sticky chocolate. “We're running off a budget, after all.”

Then everything was happening all at once again. A sybian rolled out from a bedroom as people from the landing attacked it with paint ball pellets. The house exploded into color, within seconds the crowd looking as if they had wandered in from the streets of Delhi. The microwave went ping again and the man returned with the lamp, racing across the room as the crowd began to undulate. Trish could feel the bodies writhing against her. Their skin rubbing softly against her own. A guitar solo sounded out from the heavens and a chant began to form, sucking Trish in, pulling her closer to the well of insanity.

Don't stop me, don't stop me, don't stop me, don't stop me.

Trish's knees began to knock, her skin flushed and hot to the touch. A single moan escaped her lips and then everything went black.

A sigh of relief escaped her lips when she awoke. Tucked away in an armchair in the corner of the room, no one was paying her attention. No one except from the man in front of her. Tall, dark and handsome, and like a cliché, probably overused. Yet, the pearly white smile sent Trish's cheeks off on a quick jaunt from pale to red. Another few seconds passed and she realized she was staring at the face of the Prophet. He reached forward and took her hand, his cool fingers drawing circles on her skin.

“You got yourself a prime case of Mercury poisoning,” he said. His voice was as low as Congress's approval ratings. “I've never seen someone swallow such a dosage. But I dig that. A girl who rocks out to getting her rocks off is a girl I want to get to know.”

Trish tried to follow along, but her head was still spinning and her throat felt as if it had been pumped dry. “Umm, what?”

“I'm saying that if you're putting down what you want to pick up then I'm all about taking a step to the front door and being that newspaper for you.” Trish stared, wondering if she'd hit her head hard against the floor. “I'm saying that when push comes to shove, I'm going to be hanging with tripping and we'll just watch and that's cool because push and shove are monogamous and that's all fine, we respect that.”

Finding it easier to just nod, Trish looked around the room. It wasn't what she expected from a sex cult. People were drinking responsibly, chatting, laughing, sharing each other's company in a way that said more middle-aged dinner party than Eyes Wide Shut rent-an-orgy. Her head began to spin again.

“Um, sorry, this is, uh, this is a sex cult, right?” Trish felt as if someone was dunking her head into a hot bucket of water.

“Man, everyone expects this to be some filthy sex dungeon with Republicans choking on oranges as they wank themselves off over Ronald Reagan. We're not a fucking jamboree. This is all about just feeling yourself. You feel me? It's all about having fun, about making sex feel safe and good, about learning how to use those urges and ride them to Funky Town and back all while jerking out assignments and heading home to Mama and Papa with straight A grades and a well-adjusted personality. You feel me?”

Unable to comprehend anything else, Trish nodded and the Prophet let out a grunt of approval. He offered his fist for a bump that quickly evolved into something else. At one stage, they were facing away from each other, buttocks rubbing against each other, and then a handshake turned into a butterfly which evolved into a rabbit performing a barrel roll. By the end of it, Trish staggered back as they electric slide several feet to the left.

“Yeah, girl, you got some moves!”

Musical Interlude

Chapter IV
Lessons in Propriety

I
It struck Trish that economics was really more of a liberal arts degree than anything else. It definitely wasn't a science. In science, there were not three different competing theories of gravity dependent on political outlook. Libertarian scientists didn't argue that gravity only functioned when left unobserved and socialist scientists didn't argue that gravity would only properly function if it was distributed evenly across the universe. Gravity just worked. Yet, economists could look at the same data and come to completely different conclusions.

“Ow!” Trish gritted her teeth. The Prophet's cane was coming down harder across her backside now. Her body was bent over a long table, her pants around her ankles. Her course book was propped up just in front of her. Looking down the table, men and women were bent over, textbooks from every major thinkable in front of them.

“You want something, there's work as hard as Steve's cock to do,” the Prophet was saying, moving along the table. Trish's hips wiggled in relief. “Fact of life. You want that car? Got to trim the fat of that milk till the white stuff is enough to pay for it.” Smack. “You want that fancy degree so everyone knows how smart you are? Got to put the hours in like a man who wandered out into the ice fields to wrestle a polar bear and forgot what a clock looked like.” Smack. “If you wannabe be my lover? You gotta get with my friends.” Smack.

The Prophet stopped at the end of the table and Trish took her eyes away from her book. A row of reddened asses stared back at her, the air seeming to shimmer from the heat drifting off them. “And people,” the Prophet continued, “say that if you want to succeed, you need to learn to take the pain. You need to learn to grit your teeth and say this is all worth it.” Smack. “And that's total bullshit.” Trish chewed on her lips as the smacking sound grew louder with each step. “You don't have to learn how to take the pain. You need to learn how to want the pain. To enjoy the pain. To embrace the pain. If you want to write that novel, you don't need to learn how to grit your teeth as you fret over broken sentences. You need to learn how to love fixing that hideous prose.”

“Johnson,” the Prophet said, pausing at the boy with the psychology text book open in front of him. “Nice ass.”

II

The Commandments of the Nipple

I – Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

II- Consent is a yes; not an absence of no.

III – Be safe. If you wake up in a bathtub, have a nurse check for both kidneys.

IV – Be good. Uphold the Nipple's reputation. Go longer, go harder, go faster. Unless they don't want you to. Go shorter, go softer, go slower.

V – Sex is not a sin. Sex should not be a chore. Sex is sex. Have fun. Fall in love. Fuck a stranger behind a bus stop. Sex is not politics. Sex is not difficult. Sex is what you want in a safe, welcoming environment. Do what you want to do.

VI – Commandment V does not refer to body rolls. Only do those if you are good at them. Otherwise, please don't.

VII – The Head of our Order is both wise and powerful. Give him head. If you want to.

VIII – Let he who is prepared to be fingered ask for anal.

IX – Commandment I refers specifically to oral sex.

X – You are a human being with complex thoughts and emotions. You are the result of millions years of evolution. Your ancestors were single celled organisms who lived in the ocean. The universe will continue after you die. Don't sweat your sexuality. You like vaginas? Awesome. You like penises? Great. You like both? Fantastic, I want to talk to you. You like neither? Hey man, that's cool too.

XI – Wash your balls.

III
Even before the Nipple, Trish hadn't been a stranger to the opposite sex. Picking up cute boys and taking them back to her dorm room wasn't an unusual Friday. Yet, she had never properly stared at a penis before. With all the rolling around, the darkened rooms and the desperately thrusting upward to poke her in the face, she had never taken the time to just look at a guy's cock before. Now that she was, the verdict was in. They were weird. Veins ran along the skin, little curves and bumps along the shaft. Don't even get her started on the balls. Someone was clearly not obeying Commandment XI.

“Trish, I don't see that cock hard yet!” the Prophet yelled from the other side of the room.

Kneeling in front of the stranger in front of her, Trish took in a deep mouthful of air and concentrated. “Yeah,” she said, her voice a whisper coated in smoke. “You like that baby? You like that?”

The stranger's cock didn't even flinch.

“This is stupid,” Trish said, clambering to her feet. “You can't whisper a dick hard!”

The Prophet rolled his eyes and marched across the room. In total silence, he dropped to his knees and everybody turned in his direction. His mouth moved, but even Trish standing only a few feet away, couldn't hear what he said. Her body shivered, though, and a second later, the stranger's cock was pointing due east.

“It's a vital skill, Trish,” the Prophet said. He still knelt in front of the erection. “You need to learn how to use it.”

The Civil Nipple War
ed. by Ken Burns

The Nipple's power base grew larger and stronger during the year of 2016. The Prophet's positioning as an open, tolerant, sex positive cult met a growing need among the college's population. By July, he was already in control of most of the campus and could consider his disciples within the three digits.¹ Gallup approval ratings often gave the Prophet a score of +32. He was widely considered the most powerful student within the college.

However, the Franciscan sect² within the cult grew as a more powerful resistance. Controlled mainly by Men's Rights Activists, they fought back at the message being spread by the openly bisexual leader of the Nipple. They remained members of the cult, though, because it was the only way they could actually not have women run away from them.

Matters came to a head in the Battle of College Gym Locker Room 3. The Franciscans planned to intimidate the Prophet and corrupt him to the dark side. If that failed, they were willing to depose him and install a more malleable figure head. Like Caesar in the Senate, they set upon him and the Nipple's fate hung in the balance.

Historians still argue about what exactly happened. The members of the Franciscans who still adhered to their dark ways have refused to talk, and those who have changed their ways will only grin and wink. Needless to say, the Prophet left the locker room, naked, his body covered in oil. It was then that he uttered the now memorable phrase:³

“Who will rid me of these meddling cunts.”

1 By coincidence, this is the same amount of digits the Prophet always preached for ideal for digital penetration. Some historians have taken the approach that the number of digits preached is directly related to the size of the cult. If that was the case, most members would be pleased that the Nipple never reached one thousand members. Except Steve. Who always waited for the day it would reach ten thousand.

2 The sect was named after its main member: John.

3 Lady Chatterley's Lover, An Anatomy of a Sex Cult (London: Penguin Classics, 2016), p 11.

Stanza Eleven

a.
The cheering was growing larger now. The crowd could sense the fight was coming to an end. In her prime spot, right at the edge of the ring, Trish watched as the Consummatorem rode her opponent with the skill and guile of a trained gladiator. Both fighters' bodies glistened with sweat. For a second, while the pair had been entangled in a dangerous Australian Winebox, Trish thought her bet might have gone to waste. She had clutched at her toga as the Vortex looked like he might win. The moment then vanished and the Consummatorem managed to throw her opponent onto his back and straddle him.

The Vortex was moaning now, no longer able to fight back, his hands helplessly groping at his enemy's breasts as she rode him. Trish felt bodies press in all around her, everyone leaning in for the finale. Even now, the Consummatorem was lifting her hips up, holding herself above her opponent as she looked up to the Prophet perched upon the landing above them. He stood from his seat, a purple sheet wrapped around his body. The murmurs around the ring died and everyone waited. Trish forgot to breathe. The Prophet raised an outstretched arm and his hand slowly turned, his thumb pointing upwards.

Roaring, the crowd watched as the Consummatorem dropped her hips and rode the Vortex to a groaning, grunting mess.

b.
Shivering, Trish wished the game of chess would end. Her skin was covered in goosebumps and she walked all around her square, trying to stay warm. The Prophet had hardly moved her throughout the game. A knight was clearly not one of his favoured pieces. It left her freezing in the cold night as the other naked bodies were moved around the board. The Prophet was staring out at the board, the Queen surveying his troops. Johnson was the King, protected by several nearby attractive bishops.

“Yes...” said the Prophet softly, “it's the only way... I've got to be taken.”

“NO!” Trish and Johnson shouted.

“That's chess,” snapped the Prophet. “You've got to make some sacrifices! I take one step forward and she'll take me right up the ass – that leaves you free to checkmate the King, Trish.”

“But -”

“Do you want to stop Snape or not?”

“Who's Snape.”

“Look, if we don't hurry up, your tits will freeze like Johnson's Philosopher Stones.”

There was nothing else for it.

“Ready?” the Prophet called, his face pale but determined. “Here I go – now, don't hang around once you've won. Clarissa likes to savour these moments.”

c.
Gathered around the Twister mat, people's bodies contorted into the strangest shapes. They were inventing new letters of the alphabets as they reached for certain spots. Everyone remained fully clothed and they all went home afterwards to study for their finals.

Perverts.

THE ORGASM

“I feel like an idiot.”

Standing in front of the mirror, Trish readjusted her ears. They sat against her head, pointed and plastic. The skin underneath itched and every so often someone would shout out at her. Still, she took a perverse sense of pride in how good her costume had come out, green fabric perfectly cut for a Lord of the Woodland Realm. In the corner of the mirror's surface, naked bodies flickered in and out of view.

“Could be worse,” Johnson said, his face hidden by a thick, reddish beard. “He seriously wanted me to walk around with my knees in my boots.”

The Prophet had still not arrived. No one knew what he had planned for the end of the year party. Those brave enough to ask had been waved off. Then, a day after the final exam, those members of the Nipple were sent a message. Return to campus a week after the rest of the college had left. It was only when Trish arrived did she realize she had received a different email to the others. Nearly everyone had arrived naked, a white hand painted across their chest. She had been told to dress as Legolas. A few other people had lucked out with her. Johnson was Gimli. Two of the shorter students arrived as hobbits. If she had to pick someone, Trish supposed an elf wasn't too bad.

“What are the mattresses all about?” Johnson said, his fingers digging deep into the curls of his fake facial hair.

Trish leaned over the balcony's railing. Beneath them, down in the living room, a pile of mattresses had been stacked. “I guess we'll find out soon enough.”

Two of Saruman's orcs had been unable to wait and were currently rutting against the couch as everyone else filled up on drinks and nibbles. They pulled apart awkwardly as the Prophet appeared on the balcony, striding forward to survey the room. Dressed all in black, Trish swallowed back laughter as she caught sight of his hair. The wig framing his face was ridiculous, black and wavy. It was as if someone had convinced pubic hair to independently decide to group together in an imitation of Viggo Mortensen's hair.

“I knew that when the clock struck twelve and we all back pedalled home to the land of suits or farm hands, I knew I had to make sure you'd take the Nipple home with you. So I give you the Event,” the Prophet said, his voice echoing through the otherwise silent house. “The Fellowship has two hours to rescue Merry and Pippin. If not the orcs may do with them as they please, remembering the safe word, Old Toby. And the time starts... now.”

There was a moment of total calmness, the quiet before the storm. Then the people in the room wearing nothing but a painted white hand charged forward, grabbing the two students dressed as hobbits, pulling them from the room. Everyone was laughing. They disappeared into the night. The Prophet took a step forward, his hand on the railing of the balcony.

“Wait,” Trish said, the last of the orcs sprinting through the doors. “How do we, you know, 'kill' them?”

The Prophet's head slowly turned. “Don't be dense. We fuck them. Christ, Trish, now I've got to prepare for this moment all over again.”

“What moment?”

The Prophet turned away, looking back out across the living, before he once more slowly cocked his head. It took several seconds for his eyes to even come into view. Looking over his shoulder, he stared at Trish and Johnson. His face was still.

“Let's hunt some orc.”

The Prophet vaulted over the balcony and disappeared from view, landing on the mattresses below him. Johnson laughed and readjusted his pants.

“Well, Trish, there's plenty for the both of us. May the best dwarf win.”

Epilogue

It is a country road. There is a solitary tree. Two people sit on the side of the road. One of them is sitting on a low mound or stone, it depends. It is Trish. The other is the Prophet.

The Prophet:
I have a real name, you know. No one bothered to ask.

Trish:
Didn't really have a choice.

The Prophet:
My name's Henry.

Trish:
Wow, He really can't let it go yet. It's been like a month now, He really needs to stop with the references.

The Prophet:
Do you think He's gone now?

Trish:
I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be in a Beckett reference if He had left.

The Prophet:
Fair point. What do you want to do until He leaves?

Trish:
Wait, I suppose.

The Prophet:
Wanna fuck?

Trish:
Let's wait until God is gone. Then I know if I really want to do it or not.

The Prophet:
Do you think He's gone now?

Trish:
Asking won't make it go quicker.

The Prophet:
Maybe we should toss for it. Heads, He's here. Tails, He's gone.

Trish
I have a bad feeling about this.

DISCUSSION SHEET

This discussion sheet has been attached to the end of An Anatomy of a Sex Cult by Lady Chatterley's Lover. It is intended to simulate or stimulate a critical appraisal of the text. We ask that you write in your answers and send them to the National Republican Party, courtesy of The Honorable Ted Cruz United States Senate 404 Russell Senate Office Building Washington, D.C. 20510-4306

1) Do you think the author disliked the beginning? Answer affirmatively.

2) Do you know who Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are? If yes, go to 2a. If no, go to 2d.
2a) Do you know they are dead? If yes, go to 2b. If no, go to 2d.
2b) Do you know I'm not really talking about Shakespeare? If yes, go to 2c. If no, go to 2d.
2c) Good for you! I mean, in the grand scheme of things, this doesn't have much to do with this story. But well done on being well-read.
2d) You gonna have a baaaaaad time with this story.

3) Explain why the chance of tossing four hundred tails in a row is 50%. Use Spanish.

4) Express how you feel about the concept about the Nipple as a symbol. Use the tracing paper as provided.

5) This story is littered with puns, innuendos and word play. How many did you see? Be truthful.

6) Trish, throughout the story, expresses a wish not to lose her kidneys. Explain the importance of the kidneys in the human body. Answer only in mathematical equations.

7) The author wishes to know the importance of The Modern Major General song. Explain. Be sexy.

8) The allusions of the Spice Girls invokes a powerful sense of feeling to the notion of girl power back in the 1990. Using only one finger to type, discuss the importance of President Lincoln's decision to go to the theatre.

9) Outline carefully: a) Johnson's ass b) Johnson's Philosopher Stones. Do not attempt this question more than once. 

10) What do you think happened at the Battle of the College Gym Locker Room 3? Answer with references to the following sources:
Aristophanes, The Frogs (London: Oxford University, 1992)
Edward Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London: Strahan & Cadell, 1776)
Winston Churchill, Fuck Those Bitches (New London: Amazon, 2024)

11) How troubled were you that adding the phrase “in the ass” was the only real change the author made from the dialogue from the chess scene of Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone? Be slow.

12) Did you realize that “THE ORGASM” meant the climax? If not, what did you think it stood for?

13) Through the use of only diagrams, document your arousal levels throughout the story. Be generous.

14) By the epilogue it is clear that Trish had no agency throughout the story. Did this bother you? Be humble.

15) Why didn't it bother you? It bothered me.

[Sensar]

REVIEWS

Reviews for:
ENTRY #1

Overall a pretty decent story. Well executed, for the most part, and with only one really egregious problem. The story flowed appropriately (I wasn’t caught up deciphering sentences or piecing together meaning), the dialogue felt natural, and it was wrapped up well enough.

That said there wasn’t really anything in this story that “wow”-ed me. Nothing really stood out to me as being really stellar. I really enjoyed the developing connection between Trish and Christian, but it suffered from what this entire story suffered from: terrible pacing. To me, it feels like you attempted to write two stories, or really wanted to write this one story but was kind of being tugged into writing another. You then decided to speed up the unnecessary bits, falling into a “tell not show” form of writing, and suddenly toward the end the pacing was resolved when we got to what you really wanted to write.

The story is at its best in the orgy scene. There the writing really falls into place and the flow works fantastically well. I can tell that this is where you started to enjoy yourself, and I wish the beginning of the story had had that sort of care given to it as well. Really, I think I could cut everything before the orgy scene and still have a good story. And that’s not a good thing because you wrote that beginning. It’s there. I have to look at it. Just because you can write a longer short story doesn’t mean you should.

Now for some more nit-picky comments. The dialogue between Christian and Trish, while seemingly “real”, is not very distinct between the two characters. They talk the same, they have the same kind of pauses and “ums” in their speech. And I think this is a failure of the pacing since neither character really had a chance to develop into little more than ideological vehicles. This is why it would work if you had just cut out the relationship part entirely and just jumped to the summoning/magic/orgy scene. You don’t need distinct voices for that part, or, rather, the author got so into the writing that they made it all work in a much smaller space. I think, given what this story does well and what it doesn’t, the dialogue would have been better served if it was stiff and formal rather than really same-y and awkward.

The one time usage of the word “ass” was awkward and jarring. It does not fit with the story as no other time is a swear word uttered. Not even in the dialogue. It’s like, for the briefest moment in time, you thought about taking this in a completely different, much more explicit direction, then swerved.

So yeah, we’ve got this story that isn’t bad. It just could’ve been a lot better. Its length is its indictment, its pacing a failure. I couldn’t care less about the characters as it seems the author didn’t either. The orgy scene was well written and could have stood on its own, but unfortunately doesn’t.

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the chubby girl said. “I’m Sam. I’m the club president. We just gather every week to talk and make a few sacrifices sometimes–

It’s in this moment that Trish should realize shit might get weird.

I feel there’s taboo rule of romance writing now that we live in a post ’50 Shades of Grey world, that being never name your male character ‘Christian’. But I’ll forgive you.

The story starts off cute. Trish is almost obnoxiously awkward, but it’s fun watching her fall for Christian. Your writing is great, and things such as Trish being aware their class is in the same direction are good innocent florishes that makes the ending all the more fun.

In the middle the pace begins to drag a bit. I mean you want to get a lot of the heavy lifting done to establish that Trish and Christian are deep in a relationship and have done all the dirty work in order to make her decision to go to a midnight sex meeting all the more reasonable, but it just feels odd to just give us expositional narration, almost casually, about their first kiss and first act of sex. You brush a lot of things under the rug and the story feels on autopilot for a bit. It doesn’t help that Trish kind of just goes through the motions, there’s a part where you explicitly state that ‘Trish should’ve felt something, but she didn’t’ and I just couldn’t buy that she would be so passive about it, given that the last few paragraphs have taken a great leap forward timewise.

But the ending, the ending is quite the climax. The long, dare I say ‘purplish prose’ paragraphs, punctuated by the short repetitive sentence breaks, really work here. You really evoke and bring the synesthesia to life, and it really benefits the surreal feeling of the whole encounter. It also bypasses going into explicit detail while still getting the sensual aspect out in the open.

Perhaps it would have been nice to have referred to Freyja by name earlier in the story? The namedrop comes unexpectedly and it took me out of reading for a moment. I got confused, but I’m assuming she is the Goddess in name, and the same one in Norse mythology and NOT some random student who decided to jump in at this opportunity to dry hump Christian. That’s what I’m getting at, and that’s what I’m sticking with.

And, yes, perfect. Excellent ending. The sense of control Trish has over the proceedings in that last paragraph tells the reader enough about the future of everyone. Great little tease.

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Ah, true love. Truly, nothing stuffs a story full of good vibes like a love story, right?

Wrong.

Despite the fact that much of the story is portrayed as a love story, something about it all feels weird as all fuck. Like, the whole process is literally slowly dragging to what will eventually be Freja possessing our heroine and bringing a new age of Norse Murder. The whole vibe is as creepy as it is saccharine and that is to its benefit. The girl is literally falling in love and lust with this dude and the two of them truly seem like they enjoy each other's company. The pagan club is a nice part of it, really tying together the feeling of community, but at the same time, again, that creep factor tho. Like, shit, if this sort of thing was happening in real life I'd be worried. If I knew about it, anyways.

Maybe that's why, no matter how well done this was, no matter how well fleshed out its characters are, no matter how smooth the narrative, I'm left skeeved out. Maybe that's perfect? Maybe, though, the beginning crippled the story and made it difficult to feel like natural love. This is a personal gripe, however, not a professional one. I really liked it. But also, totally needs to either explain itself and leave the mystery even more ambiguous.

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Some notes on this. It was very detailed but I felt it actually lacked detail in parts that meant it failed to paint a picture in my mind. Such as when Trish is choosing her clothes and we are just told that she put some on without any description of what they were. Also, does Trish being okay with the idea of the sex party when first hearing of it, make sense? It seems there should be more conflict on her part at that moment. You also double up on telling us she is euphoric during the ritual scene, not really necessary as we got it the first time.

However the descriptive nature of the story was amazing and I loved the detail you did go into. The ritual scene felt fast and explosive with a powerful climax. Even though it seemed confusing as to what was happening, that seemed to be part of the nature of that scene. Overall a fantastic story, good job.

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I thought this was excellent, fantastic writing that perhaps is hiding a story just lacking something. I'm not sure.

Trish's crush is beautifully realised. The bit about how she felt aware of all her blemishes and the scene after about trying to read into all the various parts of their interaction. It's just really well-written. I could rave about it for a while. In fact, most of the writing is excellent. Strangely enough, considering if you're who I think you are, the only bit I had trouble with was that the dialogue sometimes felt too wooden.

I was a little underwhelmed by the story, though. Or maybe just the ending. That final dialogue about “everything will be okay” was just a flat ending. I either needed a whole lot more, or a little bit less. I can't really say much more than that, I'm afraid. Excellent writing, but a bit of an underwhelming story. Still, the former outweighs the latter by far.

Reviews for:
ENTRY #2

Part I: The fat men with the coin is superb. It’s like something from Labyrinth or Wonderland. Or maybe it’s a reference to Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead? Whatever it is, I love it. The men speak in a way which is, wonderfully, despite the very small amount of words they actually use, distinctive and flavorful. Canto VII: Some killer lines in here. “An early mock up for incredulousness,” “We’re a sex cult, not a jamboree,” etc.

Act Two; Scene Four: Again, some killer lines. “Then, remembering where she was, she realized the shapes were probably their cocks.” Hysterical. But, I think here a problem starts to poke its head that was a bit present earlier, but is more prominent now: quite a lot of funny dichotomies are put too immediately back-to-back. She’s expecting to lose her kidneys and instantly you tell us nothing happened. Even a line break, there, would help the joke linger for just a second longer and give us a chance to actually appreciate the humor in it. The pacing falls a bit flat in those moments. But I instantly forgive you when you drop a line like “Mercury poisoning” or “being that newspaper for you.”
Musical Interlude: You included a youtube video in your Arena entry. You included a youtube video in your Arena entry. You included a youtube video in your Arena entry. Okay? You did that. I’m dying.

I: Spice Girls, “Johnson, nice ass,” and genuine, sincere, thoughtful advice on how to succeed in the world. At this point, all hope of making a conventional review for this story had deteriorated. I have sent out for reinforcements, but it will be weeks until they return, and by then, surely, I’ll be dead.

II: I want these printed on a t-shirt.

III: Oh no. Oh god.

The Civil Nipple War, ed. by Ken Burns: I utterly adore you
.
Stanza Eleven: Dear Diary, Harry Potter has entered the mix. My call for reinforcements, I fear, has fallen on deaf ears. Margery left to seek supplies two days ago and has yet to return. I’ve begun to fear the worst. Should anyone find this, know that I gave it my all, but how could I have been expected to last, alone, in this terrible darkness?

THE ORGASM: I’m orgasming.

Epilogue: You tied it back to the first two guys. You ended it full-circle. Oh my god.

Discussion Sheet: Dear Diary, I have died, now. Acute kidney failure.

God, “Use Spanish.” “Use the tracing paper as provided.” “Be sexy.” “Be slow.” God. God, God, God.

I utterly fucking loved this. Did it have small errors in pacing and typos? Yes. Did it have a few jokes that fell flat? Yes. Do I even care? No, I don’t.

This is truly one of my very favorite stories ever written on AWR. Just stupendous. Once anonymity is broken, I want to bathe you quietly in my endless praises. Gorgeous.

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Mmmmk

So how do you want me to review this?

There’s not really much to review. And no, that’s not a good thing. There’s not really much of a story here, so I can’t review that. I didn’t find it all that funny, though it was entertaining, and I recognize that as subjective. But I can’t really review that or give you credit for it since that’s…my opinion, I guess. I don’t know. The whole thing is just dumb.

On its own, I would have liked it a lot more, dumb is good. But, since this is paired in a competition with other entries that I have to rate, I have to say that this is incredibly lacking when paired with the other entries. I don’t believe this story deserves to pass on its “lolsowhacky” randomness. As there’s not much of a plot or characterization to go on either, there’s just not a whole lot to review.

You took the topic, you ran with it. You ran it into the ground. I applaud the ambition. I applaud that you decided to go in a completely different direction. This entry was probably the most interesting, and will be the most talked about for sure (or the one most remembered). This does “meta” a whole lot better than the earlier entry that attempted it. But, again, meta is hard and you have to be smart.

This isn’t smart. Well, that’s a lie. There’s a hint of intelligence. Obviously the dude who wrote this is smart as balls, the writing itself is technically perfect. It just lacks any sort of smart imagery, nothing is linked to anything else except as an excuse to deploy random, hardly-sexy scenes. I don’t even think lampooning such imagery was really effective.

Really, I’m just upset at your intermission choice. Totally ruined it all for me.



Much more appropriate.

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A goddamned masterpiece, this is. I have not in my entire life been left so amazed by writing. Sure, there is a few flaws here or there, with the beats of comedy somewhat uneven (might be my fault for the way I'm reading these), but this is really amazing. It started out dumb and just kept on dumbing itself through this all that it sucked all of the dumb out of the room. Did I say dumb? I meant silly. Silly as fucking shit. Like, holy shit. I loved this. It was so funny, didn't take itself too seriously, kept itself together somehow without going off track (The chapter system definitely helped) and was probably the best thing written in this competition so far. I'd give it a thousand points if I could. I cannot tell you enough about how nice this all was. This should be published. Wow.

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Wow. I mean, a Youtube video in a story has to be a AWR first. Also, never read a story with an interlude. As to the story itself, I loved it. It wasn't nearly as descriptive as the other story and I feel it could have been, but for the most part I was okay with that lack of description. It was such an orthodox story its hard to review it in comparison to any others. I loved its chaotic time skips and changes in pace and even style or format. It was honestly just refreshing to read. It's setting and the plot if it could be describe as such keep me riveted through out the entirety of it.

The main faults I can give it would be we never get to know the characters, which wasn't a problem I had. But I imagine others could be put off by that. Also as fun as it was, it did rely on referential humour, which may not work for everyone.